e thing: I
never...." He was about to say "doubted you," but was that true? And, if
true, was it generous to speak of it? Silence succeeded.

"I pray you, tell it me," she said; "tell it me, in pity."

"I mean only this," he resumed, "that I understand all, and do not blame
you. I understand how the brave woman must look down on the weak man. I
think you were wrong in some things; but I have tried to understand it,
and I do. I do not need to forget or to forgive, Seraphina, for I have
understood."

"I know what I have done," she said. "I am not so weak that I can be
deceived with kind speeches. I know what I have been--I see myself. I am
not worth your anger, how much less to be forgiven! In all this downfall
and misery, I see only me and you: you, as you have been always; me, as
I was--me, above all! O yes, I see myself; and what can I think?"

"Ah, then, let us reverse the parts!" said Otto. "It is ourselves we
cannot forgive, when we deny forgiveness to another--so a friend told me
last night. On these terms, Seraphina, you see how generously I have
forgiven myself. But am not _I_ to be forgiven? Come, then, forgive
yourself--and me."

She did not answer in words, but reached out her hand to him quickly. He
took it; and as the smooth fingers settled and nestled in his, love ran
to and fro between them in tender and transforming currents.

"Seraphina," he cried, "O forget the past! Let me serve and help you;
let me be your servant; it is enough for me to serve you and to be near
you; let me be near you, dear--do not send me away." He hurried his
pleading like the speech of a frightened child. "It is not love," he
went on; "I do not ask for love; my love is enough...."

"Otto!" she said, as if in pain.

He looked up into her face. It was wrung with the very ecstasy of
tenderness and anguish; on her features, and most of all in her changed
eyes, there shone the very light of love.

"Seraphina?" he cried aloud, and with a sudden, tuneless voice,
"Seraphina?"

"Look round you at this glade," she cried, "and where the leaves are
coming on young trees, and the flowers begin to blossom. This is where
we meet, meet for the first time; it is so much better to forget and to
be born again. O what a pit there is for sins--God's mercy, man's
oblivion!"

"Seraphina," he said, "let it be so, indeed; let all that was be merely
the abuse of dreaming; let me begin again, a stranger. I have dreamed in
a long dream, that I